


19 Stitches

by Proxima_Centauri



Series: Dirty Little Secret-verse (fka Tazer's Crochetverse) [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: No Plot/Plotless, kane's kind of a jerk in this one, not really shippy, rating is mostly for swearing, super delayed continuation of a verse!, the one in which tazer crochets, this is how i cope with JT getting twitter, we're baaaaaaack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 17:22:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6433462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Proxima_Centauri/pseuds/Proxima_Centauri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jonathan Toews is on Twitter.</p><p>Yes, he has the handle @JonathanToews squirreled away just in case he wants to eventually use it, but Jonny likes to post pictures of the things that he makes on this particular account that nobody must ever be aware is his. 19 Stitches has it's own Etsy shop and he gets a large amount of favorites and retweets for being a relative amateur.</p><p>Everything changes when PR and his agent tell him that he should really consider utilizing social media in growing his brand; that it would be a great tool for highlighting events that he, and the rest of the team, go to that the majority of fans have no idea about. <i>I've already marketed a decent brand without my name</i>, he thinks. “Let's give it a shot.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	19 Stitches

**Author's Note:**

> If you reached this page by googling yourself or someone you know, I'd like for you to press the back button now. However, I can't really stop you from doing anything, so eat your heart out. (This really only applies if you're Tyler Seguin, let's be honest.)
> 
> This is a sequence of events occurring in a verse I'm still figuring out. Basically Tazer takes up crafting during his concussion recovery and it sticks. Sometimes he uses it to cope with his feelings and stuff, sometimes it causes more trouble than he'd like. Rated Teen for brief swearing.
> 
> All my thanks to alifealtered for the beta! She knows what her reward is.

Jonathan Toews is on Twitter.

Yes, he has the handle @JonathanToews squirreled away just in case he wants to eventually use it, but Jonny likes to post pictures of the things that he makes on this particular account that nobody must ever be aware is his. The teammates who have discovered his little secret use their own secret Twitter accounts to follow him though, and he usually enjoys whenever Sharpy (@SharpSh00ter10) and Shawzy (@MuttRules) favorite or comment on something of his. Apparently Kane let the secret out to Breadman, because now he has random excited replies in Cyrillic every now and again.

Not only his teammates follow him, of course. Jonny is nothing if not great at networking and growing his brand, and anything that he does wind up selling off of commission goes straight to charity. 19 Stitches has it's own Etsy shop (which the guys harped on him about for ages) and he gets a large amount of favorites and retweets for being a relative amateur. Sometimes he posts tidbits about his days, albeit nothing overly specific. He's not even sure if his followers know he's a grown man - there's so many pictures of tea cozies, blankets, and scarves he's draped over armchairs in his condo that he himself can't believe his place was ever devoid of yarn.

Everything changes when PR and his agent tell him that he should really consider utilizing social media in growing his brand; that it would be a great tool for highlighting events that he, and the rest of the team, go to that the majority of fans have no idea about. _I've already marketed a decent brand without my name_ , he thinks. “Let's give it a shot.”

\-------------------

Jonathan Toews (@JonathanToews)  
Better late than never eh Twitter? Got some catching up to do!  
9:42 AM – 21 Feb 2016

\-------------------

The fanbase explodes. There is no other word for it. Within hours he has thousands of followers, far more than his crochet Twitter ever dreamed of collecting without his personal brand behind it. He tweets out a couple of other things, playing up his Captain Serious moniker, and resolves to use it only for good (and chirping). Team things. Charity events.

This all works well until one March day.

He was tweeting on his team page about a couple of upcoming charity events, shooting the shit with Shawzy on public and chatting with Leo DiCaprio on DM about how fantastic his plug-in about climate change was on his Oscars speech, when he spies a lonely, commissioned Minion hat off in the corner that was meant to be sent out yesterday. _Shit_.

He puts it on his hat rack really quickly, snaps a picture, and hits 'share to Twitter' on his screen. _Coming your way today, Steph! Will include a 10% off coupon for the delay!_ He's really good about including promotions, typically. He doesn't need the money, after all, and it keeps customers happy.

It isn't until a virtual cascade hits his phone notifications that he realizes what he did wrong. _Oh fuck. Wrong handle. Shitshitshitshit._

He can't clear the notifications out fast enough, they just keep piling in. After twenty minutes solid of his phone chirping at him Jon manages to get to the app itself and delete the tweet, but the damage has already been done.

“You're on Deadspin,” Kaner informs him with a smile in his voice the next day at Johnny's West. “That hasn't happened since you crashed your car.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Jonny mutters and pushes his way past him into the locker room. Everyone else is wise enough to leave him alone.

“Do you not know how to switch between accounts? I can help you out, man. Super easy.” Kane keeps following him, padding behind in socked feet.

“I suspended my other account. PR's got the password for the one with my name on it. They're figuring out what to say.” He doesn't look at Kane, just starts stripping with efficient motions and getting into his gear. Practice waits for no one, especially not the captain. “Probably gonna be a hack or something.”

“You could make so much money with that crochet hook, Tazer.”

Jon glares at Pat. “This is meant to relieve stress. I sell the shit because I have no use for all of it. You think I want the pressure of having to roll out hats on demand to every fucking Hawks fan, huh?”

He doesn't mean to, but by the end of this he's screaming. Seabs is pulling him backward, away from Patrick. “Dude, take a deep breath. C'mon, this way.” Jonny fights it for a second before he just follows Brent, falling into the very old habit of following him around like a rookie.

Once they're in one of the trainer's rooms and he's sitting on the table in just his boxer briefs Jon puts his head in his hands and just sits for a moment, trying to rein himself in. “Fuck, Brent. I fucked it all up. I just wanted to do some charity shit, not expose my darkest fucking secret.” He takes a deep breath.

Brent sighs and pulls a rubber ball out of his pocket. He sits in a chair and begins bouncing it against the wall. “You'll have to talk about it, no way around that,” Brent tells him honestly. Seabs has a way of laying it out very matter-of-factly, usually with the best course of action to get a good result. “Talk about how it got you through your concussion. You were selling the stuff off for charity because you couldn't find anyone else to give it away to, besides the giant boxes you send to the hospitals every so often. I know you have the receipts somewhere to prove it. Some fans will get it, some won't. You'll have to give up the shop, but you'll survive.” The thunk-thunk-thunk of the rubber ball against the drywall provides a soothing background to the message.

“Tell the truth.” Jonny says matter of factly. “That's your plan?”

“That's what you tell everyone else to do,” Seabs replies. “So we'll get into a few more fights with L.A. and St. Louis when they chirp you. Who cares? Couple more stitches never hurt us.” He shrugs and keeps bouncing away. “Besides, you sometimes rant about how crochet is a dying art. Maybe you'll revive it.”

Jon makes a noise of disbelief at that one. “There's no way a hockey player is gonna revive crochet, even if it is a French word,” he informs Seabs. The defenseman just shrugs before pocketing his ball and standing up.

“Stranger things, Jon. Stranger things.” He nods at the door. “Q's gonna wonder where we're at. I don't really want to say I was sucking face with you, so...”

Jon pulls a face. “Hell no. Once was enough.”

He and Brent leave the trainer's room, laughing.

\-------------------

The camera begins recording. Jonathan Toews, dressed in a faded Hawks t-shirt, straightens the frame a bit before sitting back in his seat.

“Hey everyone. So, uh, you all probably heard about my Twitter mess up with the picture, so I'm here today to clear some of that up for you.

“This is called crochet.” He holds up a granny square. “It’s probably something that your mom or grandma knows how to do. My mom taught me when I was a kid, but I didn’t really pick up on it much until the Hawks put me on bedrest after my concussion in 2012.” 

This is where it gets tough. Jon looks down and fiddles with the square. “I felt like I needed to do something and like, be productive somehow. My mom showed up with a hook and a ball of yarn. It was something I could do without aggravating my condition.” He forces himself to put the square down, reaches for a scarf instead to show it off. “It sort of became normal. So after I went back to playing, I took it on the road with me, too.” Drove Kaner a little bit nuts with it, but nobody needs to know that besides him and Pat, the asshole.

“You can only make so many afghans for yourself.” He laughs then. “So I started making hats and stuff for the hospitals around Chicago. They got sick of me pretty quick, so I moved on to commission work. Donated the proceeds to charity. There’s a link to my Etsy in the description of this video.” He knows that 19 Stitches has very good ratings. They’re either going to skyrocket or tank after this. “I can’t make a lot of stuff for everyone, but if it’s posted on here you’re welcome to it. I can autograph the business card or whatever too.” In for a penny.

“So, I hope that clears up some questions. I don’t want to make this too long, so if you have specific questions you want answers to reply back to this and I’ll do my best to answer them all as quick as I can,” he promises the numerous faceless people watching him spill his guts onto Youtube before turning the camera off and tweeting the link.

\-------------------

The video explodes nearly as quickly as the picture did.

PR is kinda pissed he made a move without asking them, but he doesn’t care that much. Seabs was right - he feels way better about everything now that he’s come clean. He spends the next day answering tweets like “Were those your hats @jamiebenn14 and @tseguinofficial were wearing???? They never said” and “That stuffed duck you made Sharpy’s kids was so cute!!!” Supportive tweets from his teammates, both former and current, help out a lot and make him realize he didn't make a terrible mistake.

It’s not until a couple of days later that Patrick comes by the house, letting himself in with his spare key. Jon doesn’t look up from his phone. Pat coughs.

“Uh, so. Sorry I was a dick last week. You finally had something juicy I could nitpick about, and the internet found it.” He avoids Jon’s eyes. “I should have had your back.”

Jon shrugs and scrolls a bit. “Shit happens.”

Pat makes a noise. “But when I had Madison…”

He earns an eye roll for that one. “Madison was so much different, man,” Jon replies as he sets his phone aside. “That’s like, your life. This is a hobby.” He ignores Kaner’s noise again and reaches for his current project, a red white and blue doily he’s finally gotten around to making for TJ to commemorate his trade. He shudders. “Forget it.”

“But…”

Pat finds himself on the end of the patented Tazer Stare. “Forget it.”

Pat shrugs and reaches for the TV remote to start a new episode of iZombie. “Yeah, okay.”

\-------------------

Jon gets a few assholes in his ratings, but for the most part 19 Stitches has never been better. He uses his shop to jumpstart the shops of a few other creators he’s had his eyes on for awhile, giving them shout outs on Twitter until they message him that “omg thank you but i’m so overwhelmed please don’t promo me every day thnx?”

Yes, Jonathan Toews is on Twitter. He uses it to promote those who need a bit more visibility for their causes. And now he knows _very_ well how to switch between his accounts on mobile.


End file.
